


Fire and Ghost

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2794697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Larry, and not Stu, was the one to fall on the road?</p><p>What if someone other than Tom was the first to find him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Larry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marien/gifts).



> _The Stand_ characters belong to Mr. King and are used here with love and without thought of financial gain.
> 
> Thanks to damalur for her quick and efficient beta of chapters one and two, and Emi for her assistance with chapters three and four, which were written a bit later.
> 
> I apologise for the change in tense between chapters one and two. I don't usually write past tense and when chapter two rolled around (three days after I thought 'd finished, mind you), I just went with what I was used to.
> 
> * * *

“Larry. _Larry_! Wake up!”

The fire had gone out; Larry could smell the lingering smoke, but the feeling of heat was gone. Dayna’s voice was getting louder and more urgent, and he dragged his eyes open, red pain-circles blossoming across his vision. He couldn’t see Dayna and rolled his head from side to side, hearing his neck crack as he did so. The popping sound tugged at his memory for some reason: the popping and the pain went together.

“Larry, for Godsake.” Dayna’s voice was to his left. “Get the fire going, or you’re gonna freeze.”

“We’re in a desert,” Larry said, trying to understand why he could hear Dayna but not see her. “You don’t freeze in a desert.”

Theoretically it should have been impossible to hear someone rolling their eyes, but the gesture was clearly implied in her tone of voice. “You will, you asshole. Believe it or not, winter actually gets cold out here too. The desert has actual seasons.” The smell of smoke was stronger and somehow bitter. “Up. Fire good.”

“Fire good,” Larry echoed, fumbling for the matches with shivering fingers. As soon as he tried to straighten his legs to get his fingers into his pocket, agony yammered up his left leg, and he screamed. The red pain-circles got bigger, and he knew he was going to pass out.

A slap rocked his head. “No, you don’t.” Dayna’s voice was right there by him, but he still couldn’t see her. “Get the damn matches and tell the damn dog to fetch you some more damn wood.”

“Mother Abagail would shit herself if she heard you cursing like that.”

“As if your mouth’s any cleaner.”

Larry found the matches. Kojak was drowsing beside him but woke up and went willingly off on his task when Larry asked him to fetch. Larry got the fire going again and curled up with his head on the dog’s flank, the rise and fall of Kojak’s breathing sending him back to sleep.

It only occurred to him just as he was falling the last little way into unconsciousness that he didn’t know how Dayna had found him.

* * *

She was still there in the morning, though. The shirt that she had on was smudged with ash, and there was a tear in the back that her long blonde hair didn’t quite cover. What he could see of her arms as she sat on a rock looking away from him, looked bruised. The desert was not kind to anyone.

“Hey,” he croaked. His mouth had gotten considerably drier overnight. “Dayna?”

Dayna turned to look at him, her familiar wry smile turning up the corners of her lips. “Morning, sunshine.”

“How bad do you think it is?” Larry nodded at his leg. In the fuller light of the morning sun, he could see that there were angles where no angles should be.

“I don’t think you’re gonna be waltzing at the office Christmas party,” Dayna said, and it was absurd enough that both of them burst out laughing. Kojak, woken by the noise, whuffed at them.

“Maybe I can’t dance, but if you can help me splint this sucker, I can at least get back to the road.”

Dayna’s smile vanished. “That’s not gonna happen either.”

“What? Jesus Christ, Dayna—”

She slid off the rock and came to stand beside him, the smell of fire stirring back up as she moved. She extended her hand down to him. “Try, then.”

Larry’s hand slipped through hers, though it looked as tangible as ever, and fell back to his thigh. He thought he understood, now.

“Dayna,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “how long have you been dead?”

* * *

She was also still there once he’d gotten done with yelling obscenities and throwing rocks across the ravine, the puffs of dust and flying clods of earth that each impact caused satisfactory only because her couldn’t get up and kick things.

The pills in their bottle in his shirt pocket rattled with each thrown rock, but he didn’t need _Dayna’s_ ghost to tell him not to take them. Rita might not have ever manifested like this, but she still haunted him in her own way.

Kojak, on the other hand, had retreated down the ravine, just out of sight. When the hue and cry had died down and Larry called him, he came, dragging a stick in his mouth. It was long and thick; looking at it, Larry started thinking again about splints.

“Fetch?” he said hopefully, and Kojak went back for more.

“That’s the spirit, kiddo,” Dayna said.

Larry gave her a wan smile. “It means nothing if I can’t tie ‘em on.”

“Use your shirt, dumbass.”

Larry reefed his t-shirt off over his head. It smelled of the road. “Hope this works, or I’m gonna be sunburned _and_ crippled.”

“There’s worse ways to go.” Dayna’s tone was clipped, and she wouldn’t meet his gaze. Larry figured she was referring to whatever had happened to her, whatever had left her bruised and smudge-covered. But then she added, “Betrayed by that grinning asshole,” and smashed her fist down on (and through) the rock that she was sitting on, and Larry realized she didn’t mean herself after all.

“Dayna—”

“Sue,” Dayna said in a small, broken voice, and Larry lurched up onto his good knee, reaching for her, before remembering that even if he could reach her, he couldn’t hold her. He had never seen her so vulnerable. It hurt.

She moved down off the rock and sat beside him, and he could almost feel her hair brush his cheek as she leaned against his shoulder. It made him wonder how he’d felt her slap him the night before. Probably an hallucination.

But then again, wasn’t that what all of this was?

* * *

And she was still there when the flash flood came.

Larry had splinted his leg, using the sticks and wood that Kojak had patiently brought him, piece by piece. The dead rabbit had been less useful as a medical aid but infinitely welcome; he’d cooked it over his little fire and split it with the dog. Dayna had declined the food with a laugh, sitting on her rock and watching the flames.

Now, half napping, he heard Dayna’s yell and came all the way awake, trying to scramble to his feet and almost making it before his left leg announced its resignation and dumped him on his ass again.

“Larry, you have to get out of here! Water’s coming!”

Water in the desert seemed as impossible as freezing in the desert, but she’d been right about the fire; why not about this?

Then he heard the distant thunder and the closer roaring, and hauled ass.

The closer of the ravine’s walls ( _Boulder-side_ , his brain had been calling it) was steep, studded with large rocks like the one he’d bashed his leg into on the way down. The other side was less angled, but also a good thirty feet away, thirty feet he’d have to crawl before he could contemplate the ascent.

Dayna’s fingers twisted into his hair and gave a hearty yank. “Move it, you idiot.”

Larry yelped. “Ow!” Even though she couldn’t really have hurt him, it still got him moving, up the slope, scrabbling at rocks and branches and hauling himself up inch by inch. It wasn’t that tall, maybe seven or eight feet, but he was sliding back down almost as fast as he was climbing. Kojak’s sudden flurry of barking didn’t help; Larry was too scared of falling to look back and see what the dog was so worried about.

“Left hand,” Dayna said, closer to his ear than he’d realized she could get, and Larry nearly did fall.

“Jesus.”

“Sorry. Left hand. There’s a rock there, it’s wedged in better than the others. Put your weight on it. Then move your right foot up, there’s a branch I don’t _think_ will move.”

“That’s encouraging.”

She yanked his hair again. “Just do it.”

Larry grabbed the rock with his left hand, moved his right foot to the branch, and wondered how he was meant to maintain three points of contact considering that he had a broken leg, which was now wide awake and screaming. If he made it to the top, he decided, he’d have one of Glen’s pills. If he fell... if he fell, maybe he _would_ have all of them.

He didn’t fall. The roaring got closer still, and he clawed his way up another foot, Dayna’s impossibly calm voice directing him rock by rock, branch by branch. Kojak scrambled up past him, kicking pebbles and dust everywhere, giving Larry an impromptu dry shower.

When his left hand slapped thin air he almost fell again, but then the rough scrape of the blacktop under his palm caught and held him.

“That’s it, almost there.”

“Need to rest.”

“You _can’t_.”

“Can I rest when I’m dead?”

Dayna snorted. “From where I’m standing, being dead isn’t all that restful.”

Larry considered resting anyway—he was _so_ close, and he was stable, and his upper body was hurting almost as much as his left leg—but Dayna gave his hair another jerk. She was kneeling on the blacktop, reaching down, and Larry pushed down on his left arm, reaching up with his right.

He almost felt her fingers, and then his hand passed through hers and found purchase on the blacktop. He pushed, and pulled, and heaved his battered body up onto the road, rolling and flopping like a beached fish.

Then the water came, and Larry realized why Dayna had been so urgent. This was no lazy river or gentle current; this was a torrent, a deluge, _time to build an ark_. His fire wasn’t extinguished, it was eradicated. The water splashed up over the edge of the road, threatening to clutch him and drag him in; Larry rolled again, Kojak whining anxiously at him, until only a spray like dirty brown sea foam could reach him.

All the moving around sent pain ricocheting through his body, and this time the red pain-circles didn’t stop spinning until they had turned black.

* * *

Dayna had pulled his head into her lap while he was unconscious—or it might have been a soft mound of dirt he was resting his cheek on.

“You okay?” Dayna asked, stroking his hair. As long as he had his eyes shut he could feel it. The smell of burning was still hanging around them despite the fire being long gone. Larry didn’t want to think too hard about what that might imply.

“Everything hurts.”

“I’ll bet.”

Larry pried his eyelids open one by one. He was no outdoorsman, but the position of the sun suggested he hadn’t been out all that long.

The ravine was gone. In its place was a roiling, rushing brown river, the water surging up over the road here and there, eating away loose chunks of blacktop.

“This isn’t how deserts are supposed to work,” he said, and Dayna laughed at him. Her capable fingers with their short nails scratched just behind his ear for a second, like he was a puppy.

Larry watched the water wash a cow’s skull past him, feeling a creeping sense of unreality. It was too cliché and also too surreal; if Wile E. Coyote had chased the Road Runner past him at that moment, Larry would hardly have been surprised.

Neither coyote nor bird appeared, though. Instead, there was a surprised shout from across the water.

“Larry? Is that you?”

Larry sat up straight, blinked and squinted, and eventually made out the figure on the opposite side ( _bank_ , his brain insisted) of the rushing water.

“Tom? Tom Cullen?”

“Yes! This river’s new!”

Of all the people to encounter in the desert, Tom Cullen was only slightly less likely than Dayna’s ghost. For that matter, if Dayna was dead, why wasn’t Tom dead? How could he possibly have escaped Flagg’s attention?

_I am God’s Tom_.

“Larry? Should I try to swim to you?”

“No, Tom, just wait. Wait there. The water will go down soon.” Or at least so he hoped, cobbling together facts from half-remembered geography lessons.

He turned to Dayna to see how she was taking the good news, to see if she believed Tom was real, but she was no longer there.


	2. Dayna

_Fishlake National Forest, Utah_  

The forest is stunning. There’s miles and miles of aspen surrounded by underbrush that’s probably gotten a lot wilder even in the comparatively short time that people haven’t been around to step on it. It’s like an oasis in the desert on a macro scale. This is only reinforced by the herd of elk that meander across the road in front of Dayna at one point; the bull in the lead has got to be taller than her.

At least he’s not sneezing.

Now that she’s a ghost, Dayna figured she’d be able to just flit back to Boulder in the blink of an eye, but apparently she’s in a different story, one where she has to follow the yellow brick (well, dusty blacktop) road, not one of the stories where some fairy’s going to show up and just magic her eight hundred miles.

Sue’s voice is like a poorly tuned radio station. Dayna’s had three of the guys from back home—Stu not so surprising, Ralph a bit of a shock, Glen downright confusing ( _what the fuck, old man_ she thinks, not without respect)—broadcasting for some time now, and she’d thought she was imagining things until she saw them. But any communication there was strictly one-way.

Sue, on the other hand. Sue can hear her, too.

Dayna quits trying to talk back aloud and just focuses her thoughts up ahead. In the beginning they’re mostly along the lines of, _Turn back, you idiot_. Whatever could have possessed Sue to come out here, it can’t possibly be enough to make walking into Vegas worthwhile.

It only takes her two days to figure it out, though; the only road Sue’s walking is the ghostroad, like her. No campfire, no solid human presence (the boys smell of long days of exercise), no physical sign of her.

Just her voice, saying Dayna’s name, like an erratic ping on some kind of supernatural sonar.

Since Dayna can’t do anything to make Sue louder or clearer apart from getting closer to Boulder, that’s what she does. She discovers that she can run without getting winded, and she doesn’t need to sleep. Sure would have made the trip to Vegas easier.

* * *

_Nothing but hardpan and sun, Utah_  

People are supposed to remember where they are when major world events occur.

When Vegas is nuked, all Dayna knows is that she’s in the middle of the desert and there are no landmarks, not even a funny shaped rock. She drops to her knees like her legs have been cut out from under her, and Sue’s asking her what’s wrong over and over, but all she can do is gasp for breath that she no longer needs and try not to go mad from the screaming in her head.

A whole city becoming ghosts at once is a hard thing to hear.

Finally Sue slaps her face, crisp and unapologetic, and Dayna quits sobbing and lets Sue embrace her, two ghost women on the median strip in the middle of Nowhere, Utah.

Glen, Ralph, Stuart. _Stu_.

“Oh, God, Frannie,” she says, and then she has to explain herself to Sue, and Sue starts crying as well. And Dayna’s mourning the others as well—maybe not so much Lloyd, but Jenny, even though Jenny had hated her before the end, and the others she’d known, the others who could have been true friends if they’d turned east instead of west.

But then the echoing discord of Vegas dies down in her head, and Dayna realizes that underneath all that there’s one weaker, closer voice.

“It’s Larry,” Sue says before Dayna can say anything. “I hear him, too!”

As it turns out, Larry can hear Dayna, but not Sue. And when Dayna tries to tell him that Sue says that Lucy’s pregnant, like a game of Telephone, it’s as if the cord’s been cut because the words won’t come out.

* * *

_Grand Junction, Colorado_  

As the boys walk—limp—into Grand Junction, Dayna can’t hear them any more.

Sue, on the other hand, is the clearest she’s ever been, and she’s the one to say, “I think we have a limited range.”

“Figures,” Dayna says, trying hard to hide the hurt she feels at never going home.

Sue isn’t fooled, though, and puts an arm around her shoulders. “We can stay here. You and I. I think it’s Nick’s job to guide them from here if they need it.”

“Nick’s here? How come I can’t see him?”

Sue shakes her head. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s because he’s Tom’s ghost, like you’re Larry’s.”

“So whose ghost does that make _you_?” Dayna asks.

“Yours,” Sue says simply.

 

They could stay together, somewhere in the middle of the desert where they’re both strong, where they can see and hear and touch each other.

But she can’t do that to Sue. Not when Sue could go back to Boulder and be with their friends. Not when there’s so much more for her there than the blacktop and road-dust.

Fuck it. She’ll let Sue go and then she’ll go back, not to Vegas, but maybe just as far as Fishlake. She’ll hang out among the pretty green trees, haunt the elk, watch nature take over the land in the absence of people. She’ll see how deep she can swim in the lake without the pesky need to breathe.

She will wait and watch and, if something dark rises once more in the west, she’ll run day and night toward Boulder, calling for Sue all the way.

Spying is what she came out here to do, after all.


	3. Sue

The first time Sue and Dayna meet in Grand Junction after Sue escorts the boys home, Dayna tells Sue about what is left of Vegas: a hole in the ground, sand turned to glass, and no signs of life. She puts on a brave face but her shoulders shake as she speaks and Sue wishes she could touch her, hold her. They’re too far east, though, tipped toward where Dayna is less real, little more than a voice on the wind.

Sue’s not much better off, though. It turns out that the only person she’s haunting is Dayna; nobody in Boulder can see or hear her.

But the first time they meet in the middle of the desert, where they _can_ touch, Sue hugs her fiercely, clinging to her the way she now wishes she had done more often in life. She thinks if she had never let Dayna go west in the first place, maybe they wouldn’t have to settle for this.

When it comes down to _if_ , though, there are no guarantees; if Dayna had stayed in Boulder, she might well have been at the ill-fated committee meeting the night of Harold’s betrayal, and perhaps neither of them would have made it.

 

That first time in Grand Junction, Sue brings Dayna all the Boulder news: how Larry and Tom made it home, pushing on through the snow to arrive in time to meet Fran’s newborn son; how Larry and Lucy were reunited, Larry gobsmacked by the news that he’s to be a father; how Nick helped lead Larry and Tom home and then vanished.

“I suppose it’s an unfinished business thing,” she says.

“Oh? Why do you think _we’re_ still stuck here, then?” Dayna asks with more than a hint of asperity.

“You’re still the best spy we have for the west.”

“And you? You can’t even talk to anyone in Boulder.”

Sue shrugs. “Maybe if something happens, I _will_ be able to.”

“That’s an awfully big ‘maybe’ if someone raises another army. Or releases another virus.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Dayna starts laughing. “It wouldn’t help, you’re already dead.”

They’ve been avoiding the ‘d’ word, but this time Sue has to admit that Dayna has a point.

 

That first time in Grand Junction, Dayna leans in to kiss Sue’s cheek as they part, and Sue closes her eyes, because that’s the only way she can feel it.

* * *

The first time they meet in the middle of the desert, where both of them can manifest (Sue’s word; Dayna rolls her eyes) enough to physically touch each other, they hug for what seems like hours, standing in the middle of I-70, where they would surely be run down if they weren’t ghosts, if the world hadn’t already moved on, leaving the cars and long-haul trucks to rust.

“I found a landmark we can use as a meeting place,” Dayna says, finally disengaging herself from Sue’s arms and turning to point north. Sue can see a distant peak, almost perfectly triangular. “I don’t know how far it is, but we’ve got time.”

“All the time in the world,” Sue agrees, even though she’s still wondering exactly what it is keeping her and Dayna here instead of—well, wherever it is that Nick moved on to.

 

It turns out that the peak isn’t so much distant as just small, although it is steep. It would be unbearably hot if they could actually feel the blazing summer sun. Dayna makes a melodramatic show of huffing and puffing, the last few feet, and Sue laughs. Then she turns to admire the view—not expecting much apart from more sand—and gasps.

Spindly green bushes stand out dotted against the gold of the desert floor, surrounded by the sun-faded almost-turquoise of the tough desert grass. The really incredible part though is the surrounding hills. Though they’re all similarly low, their sides are nonetheless striated with amazing bands of color, reds and oranges, yellows and browns, maps of millennia.

Dayna’s hand slips into hers, and Sue squeezes it.

“It’s so pretty,” she says.

“Much nicer than Vegas,” Dayna says. “Maybe we humans should leave nature alone to do its thing more often.”

“Tree hugger.”

“Comes of living alone in a forest. I’ve gone feral.” Dayna bares her teeth and snaps at Sue, who stops herself before she can recoil.

“Wolf girl,” she says.

Dayna tilts her head back and howls long and loud, the sound echoing off the rocks around them. Then she turns to Sue, tugging at her hand, and leans in to nuzzle her neck, mouth open, teeth hard edges against Sue’s skin.

What follows between them is not, Sue must admit, entirely surprising. Primal and raw, yes, suiting Dayna’s mood and their surroundings, but not surprising.

At least the rough rock and sand beneath them isn’t an issue, since they can—and do—only touch each other.

 

Later, after night has fallen, it’s altogether gentler. Dayna takes her time kissing Sue everywhere, as if to soothe the places where her mouth has left marks.

 

That first time out in the desert, they stay awake all night—and why not, they’ve no need for sleep—and plan out their future. Dayna will keep patrolling the Utah-Nevada border. Sue will keep watch over the Boulderites, if that’s where they stay (somehow, she thinks it won’t be forever).

They’ll meet eight times a year. Four times to report on their respective watches—Dayna will come to Grand Junction in winter and summer, Sue will go to Fishlake in fall and spring; they’ll time their travels by the phases of the moon, of course—and four times for themselves, here in this pretty piece of nowhere that’s all theirs now.

“We can always change it if something comes up,” Sue says.

“Like the end of the world?” Dayna asks wryly.

They bat ideas back and forth about how long to stay out here each time and eventually decide to play it by ear.

As to what will happen if danger _does_ rise in the west and either Dayna can’t warn Sue or Sue still can’t communicate with anyone in Boulder, they decide to play that by ear as well.

“There needs to be a handbook on how to be a ghost,” Dayna says, sounding personally offended that a representative of the spirit world hasn’t deigned to show up with a welcoming basket of muffins for them yet.

When she used to get mulishly annoyed like this back in Boulder, Sue would usually get her a drink. Nothing fancy, just a glass of wine and some cheese and crackers. And she’d tell bad jokes, which would make Dayna laugh purely at how bad they were.

She has a better way of distracting Dayna now, though, and she figures she’d better take advantage of it while she can.

 

Later—at least days, maybe weeks—the two of them realize that they need to go back to their respective watchtowers. It’s nothing tangible, since nothing _is_ tangible, but it’s there like a pair of insistent magnets pulling them apart.

They kiss goodbye and then Dayna turns and starts a leisurely jog westward. She might as well; they have all the time in the world.

For her own part, Sue intends to walk slowly, although if she keeps going day and night she’ll still be home within days; the weather doesn’t affect her, after all, and she certainly doesn’t have to worry about falling and breaking anything.

So she’ll walk back home, and wait for the days to grow shorter again, for her cue to go and visit Dayna’s forest. Maybe they’ll have a reason why they’re still haunting their respective cities by then. Maybe they’ll find a way to move on, or at the very least she’ll figure out how to knock on tables and move Ouija board planchettes.

Even if it’s none of the above, Sue has a sense that whatever fate awaits them, it’s one that they will meet together this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sue and Dayna's desert rendezvous point is [the Wickiup](http://www.summitpost.org/the-wickiup/499687) in Utah.


	4. Lucy

Lucy gives up explaining to Larry that she’s not hallucinating, she’s not feverish, she’s not dehydrated, and that if he offers her one more sip of water she’s going to pour the whole bottle down his pants. She takes her drink instead, and then makes sure that the kids don’t have sand in their sippy cups. The windows are up and covered with wet towels, but the sand gets _everywhere_.

The rock formation on the horizon keeps catching her eye, leading her gaze back off the road. Which is nearly where she’d ended up, swerving the Jeep to avoid the two women who’d suddenly appeared on the median strip.

Maybe Larry’s right and she _is_ tripping on the desert’s heat. She gives over the car keys and crawls into the very back, past the twins, who are already halfway back to sleep. Poor babies. The heat is hard on her, let alone on three-year-olds who don’t understand that it’s a necessary evil.

Lucy raises herself to a half-sit-up as Larry starts the engine and they carry on along I-70, California bound for now. She looks out of the rear window, squinting between bags and boxes.

Yes; there, on the road. Not a heat haze or a figment of her dried-up-brain’s imagination. Two women. She’s about to yell out to Larry when she realizes who they—impossibly—are.

Sue blows her a kiss.

Dayna raises one hand in a half-solemn, half-saucy salute.

And then both of them vanish.


End file.
